LEONHIRTH: Journalist achieves her 'novel' ambition

The observation, "Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it," has some merit, but events a few thousand miles away last week cast some doubts.

The one-time editor of Harper's magazine, Russell Lynes, probably had seen a lot of manuscripts before he made the comment, but he must have found one or two manuscripts worthy of publication.

At a library in Bucharest, Romania, last week, a visual journalist, Daniela Lungu, introduced her first novel, "Colony of Demons." The book launch was a few decades in the making and the realization of an almost life-long dream.

Daniela has been a friend of mine for several years, and I have been able to follow the evolution of this writing process from an idea to a 230-page book.

Of most importance, particularly in this Thanksgiving week, is that Daniela has taken her dream and made it into a 230-page reality.

The backstory of the writing of the novel is an interesting, perhaps, as the stories that the novel tells.

Several years ago Daniela received a contract from a company in Germany to do a documentary about a Romanian priest who was an exorcist.

When she traveled to the small village where he lived to make the documentary, she discovered that living alongside the inhabitants of the village were the many people who had traveled to village to seek help from the exorcist. They also had become village residents.

Daniela produced the documentary successfully, but what she had seen and heard during those days in that village stayed with her. They became the basis for her novel.

The novel is a fictional account, but the circumstances of the village provided a rich palette for Daniela to use to explore many lives and many "demons" that all were not spiritual in origin.

As many aspiring novelists, Daniela is otherwise occupied with a full-time job and family commitments, but she borrowed enough hours from her busy schedule to find time to write the manuscript and find a publisher for it.

So far, I have been able to read only a couple of chapters of the book, and they were an early attempt at translation from Romanian, which is a Latin-based language.

A translator is working on providing an English version of the book and hopes to have that complete by spring of next year.

Since she was a child, Daniela has wanted to be a writer, but she has had a few discouragements along the way.

Despite these discouragements, she wrote short stories and treatments for novels and movie scripts. She didn't want to let her dream fade.

Her first prospect for publishing this book did not work out, but she found a second publisher that has put the manuscript in print.

She described the book launch as one of the best days and one of the scariest days of her life. She will continue a series of personal appearances to promote the book.

Daniela already has begun work on her second novel, so "Colony of Demons" should only be her "first" novel since she now has realized her goal of being a published author.

And I am looking forward to reading the entire novel.

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LEONHIRTH: Journalist achieves her 'novel' ambition

The observation, 'Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it,' has some merit, but events a few thousand miles away last week cast some doubts.